Dave – the majority of Spanish in the street are really OK with this. We live in a small village inland and when the Bands were posted on the village notice board all we got from the villagers was very warm congratulations.

It may be a Catholic country but you find a lot of the Spanish are more forward and free thinking than most others.

This was driven by the current Prime Minister who is a staunch Catholic and it is a personal view of his, not the majority of his party.

Actually, the appeal was lodged in 2005! The PN report earlier today was only to alert us that a judgement was due.

A seven-year deliberation is not the finest hour for Spanish jurisprudence – justice delayed and all that.

It’s possible that the time that passed helped inform a decision – support remained strong in Spain, marriages went off smoothly, additional European countries introduced equality without problems, and the ECHR gave some important rulings on the rather similar wording of ECHR article 12, as I mentioned earlier.

And whether the delay was wise, or a sign of a struggling constitutional court system, at least they got there in the end.

The real news here is that the government is using this as a pretext to drop the issue.

We won’t have the text of the ruling for several days, but it is very likely that the constitutional court found that Parliament is free to choose whether to have same-sex marriage or marriage-like civil unions, or neither. I think it is very unlikely that the court has argued that Spain is obliged to offer marriage equality.

But Mr Gallardon has said he will leave the marriage equality law alone. Assuming he doesn’t change his tune when he reads the ruling, that’s a big concession.

This is not just a victory for reading comprehension on the part of three-quarters of the judges. It’s also a victory for the Spanish people’s support of marriage equality.

Legal victories and democratic victories are both precious in their own way. This news brings a bit of both.